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PW: And I know you had a very, a lot of challenges throughout the war. I have one last question for you today, and that is, who helped you the most throughout that whole period? Particularly like starting from when they send you to Tanforan and you're in Topaz and resettlement, like who helped you the most?

YW: When I was in camp? Just the people. Just nice people. Because the nice people that I remember are the ones that was after I left camp, but not in camp. In camp was, yeah, if you didn't have the help -- see, what they did was they put us there. They said, "Well, we gave you a place to sleep." They did, they gave us a barrack. Nothing in there, but they gave us a barrack, so yeah, they gave us a place to sleep, to live. They said they gave us food, but like when we first got there, everybody's thinking, well, it's a cafeteria, somebody's going to feed us. Well, who's going to cook the food? And they were nice enough to say, "Oh, we're leaving everything to you, this is where you're going to live, you run it the way you want to run it, here's your food." That was their attitude. Well, nobody had ever been a cook for a hundred people. If you cook, you want to cook for your own family, you don't cook for a hundred people, two hundred, eight thousand people. But they said, well, they gave us a thing, you do what you want. So you have to get organized. They finally hired block managers, and they kind of organized you. But up to that point, you're just kind of standing around waiting, what's going to happen, who's going to cook our food, or where's the food? Who's going to clean up after? So everything took a while until that hit us. Well, if we have to do it, then you can't just cook for you and your family, you have to cook for everybody, everybody. So it gets to a point -- and it took a while for the block manager to get the people together, okay, let's find somebody who's willing to cook for that many people. Well, sometime a man will say, he cooked for his family of five or seven people or something, maybe with extra help he can do more. And so other Isseis kind of helped, oh, the Isseis were good at that. They would volunteer and they'll help. They were good about doing that kind of thing, volunteering to help. And then you find somebody.

Well, first I was helping at the mess hall, and I thought, "Well, that's a good place, at least I'll eat." And I couldn't go very long, because like I said, I was sick. They tell you, they limit you to how much you serve, one tablespoon to everyone, equally, whether you're small or whether you're an adult. And there were men that were working out in the fields, my job was to serve, I was a server, and I used to give more to the men that were working in the fields because they're hungry. But you could only give them one tablespoon, the same as you're giving a little child. And they didn't like it because I just gave them that one tablespoon, and the cook's getting mad because the food's running out and if I do that, and I said, "What would you do if you run out of food?" And they said, well, they might have to open up some cans that they had. And I said, "Well, open up the cans," so they got mad. Anyway, so then I decided to quit that job, and I went to go work for the police department. I was a timekeeper for the police department. Then I spent my time as a timekeeper telling the Issei men especially, "When you go and steal the lumber, don't steal the lumber..." well, you're not supposed to be stealing the lumber, but you know, people wanted wood so that they can make chairs. You want to sit around, you can't sit around in an empty room, and you don't want to sit on your cots all the time, because the cots sink and they'll break and whatever. So they want to make their own chair, they want a table to sit around to eat off of. And so they said they're going to go look for some scrap lumber to make chairs, and they were real clever, they were real capable. But when the inspectors came around, we found out the inspectors came around, we'd say, "Don't go there to steal lumber at the same time, because this inspector's going to come." And you're trying to tell them don't steal the lumber at certain times. And I'm there myself, I'm looking for nails because you need nails to make the furniture, right? Well, they knew how to make furniture without nails by cutting into the wood somehow. You know how Japanese do that? They're so clever. But I did manage to pick up about six nails, I think. And at that time, girls were wearing hair ribbons, that was the style, all the girls wore hair ribbons to keep their hair back. I had my one and only hair ribbon, and I tied the six nails around with my hair ribbon, I gave it to my friend when she got married, and I couldn't find any Christmas gifts. So anyway, that was my Christmas gift to them.

But people did anything and everything to help each other. And it's not like they were meddling, they were really little things. They would bring you an empty can, like Del Monte used to have big cans to put in fruits, and they were getting ready to send to the servicemen and everything, so they had these big cans. Well, somebody would give me a can. The can was for me to throw up in, but you need something. You need something. And at first you use it to get water and wash yourself and everything, but you know, later on it's something to throw up in, or something to go to the bathroom in. I mean, I'm sorry, but this is real. When we were in Tanforan, that's why that was so hard, too, because we weren't allowed to leave the stinky, smelly stalls after a certain time. Like when I saw those signs in these stalls, in the bathrooms, supposed to be, and I saw the signs "black" and "white," I guess that's when I first learned the meaning of the word "discrimination." They were truly discriminated.

PW: How did this whole experience make you think about being Japanese American, since you were talking about discrimination?

YW: When you can't help being who you are, I think if I had to say what... I could (feel) for the people that were in the camps, don't ever give up hope, because that's all we had was hope. You hope the war would hurry up and end, you hope the boys would come home safe. And they're so young, they were so young. I think about these stories, I used to hear about these young boys that used to come to my apartment when I was in Cleveland. And it sounded like they were old men that were living on the streets, and they would come and, "Oh, did you ever hear of the family named such and such?" That's my parents. They didn't have anything to eat that they, oh, yeah, they ate that morning. And here it is late at night, they hadn't eaten since then. You just feel so... well, I was young at that time, too, but I felt like they were all family. So you had to take care of them, and they repay you with a couple of carrots or a potato. You know, that kind of thing stays with you, and you hope that they found a job, you hope that everything turned out okay.

PW: I think this has been a really incredible interview, and I think it's been so many stories. I could talk to you for another couple hours, but I think we'll stop. Thank you so, so much for all of your stories and sharing and experiences.

YW: Thank you.

<End Segment 18> - Copyright © 2019 Densho. All Rights Reserved.